The Applicant has developed a wide range of printers that employ pagewidth printheads instead of traditional reciprocating printhead designs. Pagewidth designs increase print speeds as the printhead does not traverse back and forth across the page to deposit a line of an image. The pagewidth printhead simply deposits the ink on the media as it moves past at high speeds. Such printheads have made it possible to perform full colour 1600 dpi printing at speeds in the vicinity of 60 pages per minute, speeds previously unattainable with conventional inkjet printers.
Printing at these speeds consumes ink quickly and this gives rise to problems with supplying the printhead with enough ink. Not only are the flow rates higher but distributing the ink along the entire length of a pagewidth printhead is more complex than feeding ink to a relatively small reciprocating printhead.
It is often necessary to decouple the printhead from the ink supply, usually because the ink supply is a replaceable cartridge, but also if the printhead is provided as a replaceable cartridge. The detachable coupling must provide a fluid tight seal and offer simple operation for user convenience. If the printer is full color, the detachable interface will need to have three, four or five adjacent couplings. This can significantly increase the size of the cartridge.